


Shut Up

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Fracture and Repair [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Complicated Relationships, First Time, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Intimacy, M/M, Post-Coital, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 19:55:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16793707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: “You don’t have something to say?” He is aware of the irrationality of the accusation in his tone, and he listens to Potter’s seemingly baffled silence, then he feels Potter’s chin against his shoulder again, feels it slide down so that he can rest his cheek on Severus’ back.“No,” he says, finally.Severus snaps.





	Shut Up

Severus lies on his stomach in the bed, his face pressed to the hard cushion of his pillow, which is stiff and allows a good support for his neck. It’s still sore, sometimes - when the skies are stormy and the air pressure too high, and he feels the twang of phantom pain under the knotted scar tissue.

He faces away from Potter, but he is aware of the other man’s body pressed up against Severus’, his chest against the side of Severus’ shoulder, one of his knees loosely hooked over the back of Severus’ thigh.

He’s more muscular than Severus had figured. His thighs are thick with corded muscle, his calves powerful, and he runs warmer than Severus does. Under the thick quilt, his fingernails are running back and forth down the length of Severus’ spine, and the slight scratch is just hard enough to be beyond ticklish, and instead just be faintly pleasurable.

“Do you always feel the need to _pet_ your lovers like a cat?” he asks, with more venom than he feels. There’s a short pause, and then he feels Potter’s mouth against his shoulder, the brush of his lips against the skin: it feels nice, and it makes Severus clench his teeth slightly. It had been one thing, during the act itself: it had been one thing, seeing Potter stretched beneath him, his arms pinned under Severus’ hands (and _that_ was an act, Severus knows, because Potter could likely lift Severus in one arm if he wanted to, let alone break his hold), his eyes tightly closed. He’d wrapped his legs around Severus’, hooked him close, had arched and writhed and _gasped_...

Oddly enough, it had been the aftermath that had left Severus fascinated, left him reverent and focused, his mouth dry. He had watched the way Potter had drawn a wash cloth thoughtlessly over his own belly, over his inner thighs, wiping away the wetness there, before doing the same to Severus. Easy movements, casual, effortlessly intimate. Severus had watched them with a mix of awe and distant jealousy, feeling as if there was a chasm between them, although they were but a few inches apart on the bed.

Much like now. 

“My lovers, huh,” he repeats quietly, and Severus swallows hard, feels the humiliation burn in his chest, presses his cheek tighter against the pillow and resolutely looks at the wall, and not at Potter. “That sounds nice.”

“Are you going to go?” Severus demands impatiently. 

“No,” Potter decides. “Never. I’m going to stay here forever.” Severus rolls his eyes, ignores the way it makes his heart beat the slightest bit faster, ignores the way he feels just slightly warm. He doesn’t mean it, idiot boy. He’ll be gone within the hour. 

“Shut up,” Severus says, and Potter laughs, presses closer. He’s so _warm_. Potter’s hand shifts, dragging down the left side of Severus’ back, and it stops about halfway down, where there’s a sudden tear in the skin. The fingernails are replaced with the gentle pads of Potter’s fingers, and Severus feels their exploration of the scar tissue; equally, he feels the smile hidden against his shoulder turn into a frown. 

He says nothing as Potter pushes the quilt back, sits up, stares down at the left side of Severus’ back, where once, his father had been overzealous with his belt, and Severus’ mother had been away for a few days, and unable to put balm on the wounds to keep them from scarring. He had been ten - his Hogwarts letter had arrived only a few weeks later.

The silence is pregnant between them, and Severus waits for the expected litany of questions, of demands.

They don’t come.

Potter replaces the blanket, and instead of stroking the skin of Severus’ back, he wraps one arm tightly about his lower back, his fingers spread possessively over the side of Severus’ skinny waist. The seconds tick by, and Severus hears Potter’s breathing even out, feels him relax.

“Well?” he asks, finally, when he can no longer withstand the weight of the quiet. Potter’s chin shifts against his back, and he sounds slightly bleary when he responds, as if he had been on the way to sleep.

“Huh?” he asks, eloquent as always. 

“You don’t have something to say?” He is aware of the irrationality of the accusation in his tone, and he listens to Potter’s seemingly baffled silence, then he feels Potter’s chin against his shoulder again, feels it slide down so that he can rest his cheek on Severus’ back.

“No,” he says, finally. 

Severus snaps.

In a second, Severus is straddling the muscle on Auror Potter’s belly, and his hand is tight around Potter’s throat, but not yet squeezing. Potter looks up at him, his lips pressed loosely together, his gaze focused on Severus’ face, and Severus feels stupid, feels _naked_ in a way that has naught to do with his lack of clothes, but Potter doesn’t seem frightened. He doesn’t even seem _surprised_. His hand slides up to loosely around Severus’ wrist.

“Vernon never used his belt,” he says, almost conversationally, as if he is commenting on the weather. Severus’ blood is abruptly cold and as thick as molasses, seeming to pump slowly in his veins. “Sometimes he’d throw something at me, and it’d hit me - unlike Petunia, he was usually aiming to miss, but she’d let me have it with a frying pan, the back of a door, something like that... He choked me though, once or twice, when he was really upset, when I’d really done something to mess with him. His hands weren’t like yours - I like your hands. They look like something somebody’s carved, like they started as a block of marble, and even now, I can feel how gentle they are. They’re cold enough to be marble. His hands, though, Vernon’s hands, they were--”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Severus hisses, surprised by the desperation in his own voice, and he tears his hand back from Potter’s throat, presses his palm hard against the younger man’s chest instead, so hard that his fingernails leave slight crescent marks in the skin, so that he wrenches his hand back too. He holds both of his hands against his chest, where they can’t touch the other man, can’t hurt him. 

Potter looks past him, to the wall, and Severus can see the bob of his Adam’s apple in his throat. 

“It was your dad, right?” Potter asks quietly.

“Yes,” Severus says. His voice is terse.

“Can we go back under the blanket?” Potter asks. “I’m freezing.” Severus’ kneejerk instinct is to snap at him, to shove him from the bed, but Potter’s tone is quiet and gentle, and Severus doesn’t feel that he is being mocked, that he is-- Severus drops down on the bed beside Potter, and he hauls the thick quilt back over them, buries his face back in his pillow. 

He can feel Potter in the bed beside him, but more than that, he can feel the gap between them, the slight cold where before there’d been the heat of Potter’s body, the hardness of his muscle. 

“Can I come back?” Potter asks. “Is that okay, if I lie like I was before?”

“ _Don’t_ condescend to me,” Severus says.

“I’m not condescending to you, you abject bitch,” Potter replies, seeming slightly amused. The even way he pronounces the insult almost makes Severus laugh, but he clenches his jaw to prevent the huff of amusement from escaping. “I’m asking if you’re okay.”

“ _Come back_ ,” Severus mutters, ignoring the latter sentence, and Potter sidles closer again. Severus feels himself relax slightly at the way Potter half-blankets him, his cheek against the bony material of Severus’ upper back - it can’t possibly be comfortable, with how cold and stiff he is, but Potter doesn’t complain. Once more, his hand loosely loops around his waist. “I never knew he choked you.”

“Like I said, he only did it once or twice,” Potter murmurs. “Sorry, I didn’t... I thought maybe it was a scar from a spell, I didn’t realize what it was until I was looking at it.” 

“You recognized it, though,” Severus points out, after a half-second’s pause. 

“Read a book about child abuse in the library once,” Potter mutters. “Thought it might make me feel better. This isn’t really abuse, I was thinking, so I’ll look at... at the real thing. Could be much worse, after all.”

“That was stupid,” Severus says.

“Yeah, well. I was only nine.” Severus closes his eyes tightly, feeling himself stiffen slightly in shame, and he feels Potter exhale. “Shitty people,” Potter says.

“Yes,” Severus agrees, slightly uncertainly. He waits for the inevitable insurance that _he_ is a “shitty person” as well. 

“Can I go to sleep this time, or are you going to choke me again?” Potter asks instead, and Severus reaches for the other pillow and swings it back, so that it hits Potter in the back of the head. Potter laughs against Severus’ back, and Severus feels his lips shift fractionally toward a smile. “Thanks,” Potter murmurs, and he shoves the pillow back.

Once more, Severus feels Potter’s breathing even out, feels his body relax and melt against Severus’ back. He listens to the steady rhythm of the younger man’s breathing, feels the beat of his heart against Severus’ skin.

Severus shifts his position slightly, careful not to dislodge the other man, and he lets his eyes droop closed. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Hit me up on Tumblr](http://dictionarywrites.tumblr.com/faq). Requests always open.


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